The Car Wreck

In the dark I saw the sharp bend to the left too late and drove into the turn too fast. I jammed on the brakes and jerked the steer­ing wheel to the left, but the road was slick from the pour­ing rain. The car went straight. The tires squealed and skid­ded off the asphalt. Sit­ting beside me, Randy grabbed the dash­board with both hands as we careened toward a three-rail fence.

Time seemed to shift into slow motion. The car’s hood dipped down as the front wheels plunged into a ditch. My chest slammed into the steer­ing wheel. The hood bounced sky­ward, throw­ing me back in the seat. The car soared out of the ditch, then crashed back down, still speed­ing forward.

The bumper struck the base of a fen­ce­post. With the soil soft­ened by a two-day rain, the blow uproot­ed the post and threw it up on the hood. It came at the wind­shield like a bat­ter­ing ram and hit the plate glass at eye lev­el. A gory image of my decap­i­ta­tion flashed through my mind, but the wind­shield held in place and the post launched into the air and flew over the roof. I watched the seams of wood­en planks sep­a­rate and slide across the wind­shield and heard the bro­ken boards scrape along the sides of the car as it sped through the fence.

The car zoomed over a lit­tle knoll, then pitched for­ward, and skat­ed down a steep slope of soft wet loam. The head­light beams bounced up and down over a green pas­ture that descend­ed to a tree-lined ravine a hun­dred feet below.

I stood on the brake, but it had no effect. The car raced down toward the trees like a sled on an icy hill­side. Twen­ty feet. Forty. Fifty. I put all my leg’s strength into the brake, my knee locked, my fists grind­ing the steer­ing wheel to dust, my jaw clenched so tight I couldn’t breathe.

Six­ty feet. Sev­en­ty. The head­lights fell on a big tree direct­ly in our path at the bot­tom of the slope. Out of the cor­ner of my eye, I saw Randy brace for the impact.

We’re going to die, I thought.

Then it came to me out of nowhere. I turned the steer­ing wheel as hard to the left as I could. The car kept going straight, but it slowed, then coast­ed to a full stop, and stalled out.

I leaned back in the seat and let out a heavy breath. Through sil­ver strings of rain, I stared at the broad trunk of the tree. We were so close I could see the tex­ture of its bark.

“You okay?” I asked Randy.

He lit a Marl­boro with a trem­bling hand and drew hard on it. “I’m alive,” he said quietly.

We sat for a long time with­out say­ing any­thing, the only sound the rain pound­ing on the car’s roof.

When the adren­a­line wore off, it sank into my con­scious­ness that I had wrecked my car, a gray Dodge Lancer my dad bought me for $350, a six-cylin­der stick shift I’d named the Bul­let as a joke because it didn’t go fast. I stared at the igni­tion key dan­gling from the steer­ing col­umn, think­ing about the Bul­let. Some­times, it seemed she almost had a per­son­al­i­ty. Reli­able. Deter­mined. Resilient. I ten­ta­tive­ly reached for the key and turned it. She start­ed right up. I gave her some gas, then eased off. She idled smoothly.

Randy shook his head and grinned.

We got out in the pour­ing rain, walked around to the front end, and stared at the mounds of mud that had piled up at the Bullet’s front wheels to scotch her momen­tum when I’d turned the steer­ing wheel to the left, almost too late.

The fen­ce­post had gouged a big gash in the Bullet’s grille and front bumper and the bust­ed planks had scratched her sides, but oth­er­wise, her exte­ri­or seemed okay. We looked under the hood. There was no vis­i­ble dam­age. I took a close look at the wind­shield. No cracks. Even the wipers still worked.

With Randy push­ing from the front, I backed the Bul­let out of the hole she had dug. Randy climbed in, and I drove her slow­ly up the slope. Halfway up, I heard a cow bawl and I saw ten or twelve dark fig­ures hulk­ing under trees on a ridge to my left. By the time I drove through the break in the fence and eased the Bul­let through the ditch, the rain had light­ened up.

I stopped on the side of the road and looked back at twin trench­es in the mud run­ning through the ditch and the fence and on over the knoll. “I didn’t think I was going that fast.”

“It wasn’t the speed,” Randy said. “You hit the brake too hard com­ing into the turn. It locked the wheels and we slid out of control.”

Randy would lat­er dri­ve heavy-duty trucks in the Army and pub­lic tran­sit bus­es in D.C. He knew what he was talk­ing about. The crash was my fault. The break in the fence was my responsibility.

“The cat­tle will get out,” I said. “We bet­ter tell someone.”

“I saw a farm­house back the way we came,” Randy said.

I turned the car around. We found a mud­dy dri­ve­way run­ning down a hill to the farm­house. The dri­ve­way took us around behind the house where I parked between a pick-up truck and a tractor.

It was past mid­night and pitch dark, no moon or stars in the driz­zling rain, no light in or around the house. Wak­ing up coun­try peo­ple in the mid­dle of the night is a risky propo­si­tion, but at six­teen I didn’t know enough to be afraid.

Randy and I were head­ed toward the back porch when the dis­tinc­tive sound of a shot­gun being racked pierced the silence and a blind­ing light hit us between the eyes.

I froze.

“Who are ya and whad­daya want?” A hoarse angry voice.

“Name’s Ken Oder,” I said, my voice shak­ing. “I ran my car through your fence. Your cat­tle can get out through the break.”

“He’s tellin the truth!” A high-pitched scratchy voice. “I heard the crash!”

The blind­ing light went off. A porch light came on. A bean pole dressed in long johns with a spot­light in one hand and a rifle in the oth­er stood beside a short stumpy woman wear­ing a flan­nel night­gown and armed with a pump-action shot­gun. “Put on your slick­er,” she barked at the old man. “Take ‘em up the hill and fix the fence ‘fore the cows run all over cre­ation.” They shuf­fled through a screen door and dis­ap­peared inside the house with­out anoth­er word.

“Damned if I go any­where with you again,” Randy mut­tered. “Sec­ond time tonight you almost got us killed.”

The old man came out wear­ing a rain­coat over his long johns and threw some planks in the truck bed. We rigged up a tem­po­rary fence that night. I went back in the morn­ing and helped him sink a new post and nail up rails. He wouldn’t let me pay for the dam­ages. “Crazy sumbitch­es run through this fence all a time in a big rain,” he said. “You the only one ever come and told me. We’re square.”

Dad took the Bul­let to a church mem­ber who was an auto mechan­ic. He adjust­ed the front end align­ment, removed a splin­ter from the radi­a­tor, and sealed up the pin­hole. Cost about thir­ty bucks. I nev­er fixed the big dent in the grille and bumper.

Sport­ing her bro­ken nose and bust­ed lip, the Bul­let clocked 100,000 miles after the wreck, tak­ing me every­where I want­ed to go from my high school years all the way through UVA, trips to Flori­da on spring breaks, out to Yel­low­stone Park, down through Wyoming, Col­orado, and Texas, all across the south­east, scores of runs to Mary Bald­win to court my auburn-haired blind date, and sev­er­al nerve-wrack­ing mis­sions to Aiken, South Car­oli­na, try­ing to con­vince her to mar­ry me.

They say a car is just a pile of met­al parts put togeth­er a cer­tain way. Gen­er­al­ly, that’s true, I guess. I’ve owned twen­ty-three cars over my long life. Twen­ty-two of them had no soul.

The Bul­let was dif­fer­ent. She was my steady com­pan­ion through sev­en of the best years of my life. I came of age with her, and I cried when I had to give her up. I loved that old car, and fifty years after we part­ed, I still miss her.